Handcuffed to a Corpse: German Intervention in the Balkans and on the Galician Front, 1914-1917

Michael P. Kihntopf

To many historians, World War I is a series of attacks and counterattacks across the moonscape of the Western Front. There was another front that was as important as the one that stretched through Belgium and France. It was on the Balkan and Galician Fronts and between the Russian and Austria-Hungarian empires that the war had its genesis.

Paradoxical, General Alfred von Schlieffen, the man who minutely planned an invasion of France through Belgium, had no scheme for dealing with the Russians beyond fighting a delaying action. Firmly believing that Russian mobilization would be lethargic, he was confident that the Reich's soldiers could defeat France and then redeploy to the East in time to meet the slow-moving Tsarist soldiers. Even though Austria-Hungary was Germany's only ally in the early 20th century, no coordinated plan for dealing with the Russians was ever devised. The consequences of this led to catastrophic defeats for the Dual Monarchy. By early 1915, the German General Staff realized that the Austro-Hungarian army was incapable of providing a viable deterrent against its enemies. To strengthen their ally, the General Staff managed a series of campaigns that were designed to seriously maim the Russian army and subjugate the Serbians. Leading those campaigns was August von Mackensen and Hans von Seeckt.

This book looks at the driving forces on both sides of the Eastern Front with a particular emphasis on the failures and successes of the Central Powers.